Will Life After Death EVER Be Possible?

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Will Life After Death Ever Be Possible?</H4>

An old idiom says there are two inescapable truths in life - death, and taxes. Death is an experience all humans will one day go through, but due to its nature, we don’t know anything about what comes next. Regardless, our species has spent millennia pondering the topic, but are we coming any closer to truly knowing?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; Will Life After Death Ever Be Possible?

The afterlife is one of humanity’s oldest concepts. It is the idea that our consciousness continues to exist after death, independent of our physical bodies. Almost all human religions believe in an afterlife. In Abrahamic religions, this is characterized by the dead going to one of two places, paradise or hell. This is determined by God, according to how they behaved during life. Alternatively, reincarnation is a popular belief, especially in Indian religions. Also depending on how you acted, it says your soul is transferred to a new living being after death. This is a never-ending cycle of rebirth, where how you act in one life determines what you become in the next. While interesting, the religious angle for the afterlife is one that’s been discussed extensively. So, let’s instead consider what research is being done into life after death, and if there is any concrete scientific evidence indicative of an afterlife. 

Currently, a real physical way for your life to continue after death is impossible. Nevertheless, there’s been plenty of speculation, primarily in the realm of science fiction. For example, mind uploading is the suggestion that the whole brain can be copied into another vessel. Essentially, this is when you upload your biological self to a computer. There are three assumptions central to it, however. Firstly, the technology must be possible. Secondly, a simulated brain must be able to hold a real mind. Finally, the person in this simulated brain must indeed be the real human you. Let’s look at each of these one by one. 

First, is the technology possible? It’s likely our brains are one of the most complicated creations in all of nature. One human brain contains roughly one million billion neural connections. We can, though, create a comprehensive map of these, called a ‘connectome’. It’s an extremely difficult task, but in 2023 researchers managed to successfully create one for the larva of a fruit fly. A human brain is significantly more complex. But this early research does at least indicate that it’s not impossible to replicate a human’s, it’s just exceptionally difficult. 

Onto the second assumption, that a simulated brain must be able to hold a real mind. Current research suggests that a brain’s neural arrangement is what creates our consciousness. This is by no means an unquestionable truth, but most modern, mainstream science is tilting that way. So, since this is (in theory) independent of our physical bodies, a computer could indeed replicate a mind. From some perspectives, all it would ever be is a precise copy of a map, from our brains to a harddrive.

Finally, the third assumption, that the person in a simulated brain must indeed be the real human you. This, much more than the previous two, is an area of heavy philosophical debate. Without our physical selves, would a transplanted brain really be a continuation of the same person? Or, would it just appear to be the same? There’s no way to know for certain, not without uploading for real, to test it out. And that is fraught with ethical issues.

So, overall, we’re still not certain if mind uploading will become a reality. In stories, it seems simple; in real life, not so much. Recreating one million billion neural connections is exceedingly complex. And, even if we could, it’s unclear if the result would ever truly behave like a genuine human brain does. To then imagine such a technology being applied to all humans alive… well, we are clearly a long way away from that.

Interestingly, though, there are some (usually wealthy) individuals who have been so confident that the technology will become reality, that they’ve had their bodies cryogenically frozen. The well-worn idea being that they’ll one day be awakened in the far future, and then be given immortality. The somewhat frightening reality, however, is that we aren’t actually certain that we have this kind of cryonic technology, to begin with. Even in the cases when deceased bodies (or brains) have already been frozen forever. 

The first attempts toward this were made in the 1960s, and were almost all catastrophic failures. That is except for one man, the American professor Dr James Bedford, who has seemingly been successfully frozen since his death in 1967. In the years and decades after Bedford, the industry has become much larger, with cryonics companies existing all over the world. The number of confidently claimed frozen subjects is still quite low… but it’s no longer only humans that are being put on ice; a Russian company allows for pets to be frozen too. But, there is a major downside, and one leading reason as to why we shouldn’t all rush to be cryogenically preserved just yet; right now, it’s completely impossible to revive a frozen body, and we have no idea if it will ever be. That’s the gamble that those who do follow this path have to take. But, if the gamble pays off, and mind uploading is developed, then perhaps those people really will live forever one day.

Broadly, though, there is another way to approach death (and the potential thereafter). Because what if there already was a life after death, without the need for technology to reach it? A scientifically sound, second realm, without the need for religion or faith. Interestingly, there are a few theories. 

Various studies have been done into brain activity during death, and found that it actually spikes significantly. Once the heart stops beating, our brains will produce significantly more brain waves than in a normal, conscious mind. This has recently been found to go on for anywhere between 30 seconds and up to 2 minutes. Generally, it’s said that the brain enters a state of heightened consciousness in its final moments. The catch is that it’s really impossible to know what this feels like until it happens to us - at which point, we’re likely about to die and literally fail to live to tell the tale. Research into this topic is notoriously difficult, requiring detailed observations of brain activity during someone’s dying moments - another ethically complex task. But the pioneering researcher, Rick Strassman, does claim to have substantial evidence for what’s really going on.

During the 1990s, Strassman became one of the first individuals to research the medical applications of psychedelic substances. Initially, his primary focus was on dimethyltryptamine, more commonly known as DMT. This is a psychoactive substance, and has been commonly used throughout all of human history by various cultures. When consumed, it can produce intense hallucinations and psychedelic effects. While strong in its effects, they last a relatively short amount of time - roughly 10 minutes or so. In most countries DMT is a controlled substance, but surprisingly it’s already present in a great deal of organic life. And evidence even shows that mammalian brains could be capable of creating DMT. Multiple studies have found the compound to be present in human fluids, such as spinal fluid, blood and even urine. While also at seeming production centers in our brains, specifically in the pineal gland - a neural region historically romanticized as the ‘third eye’.

Back to Strassman, and this is one of his main areas of research. He theorizes that the human brain releases DMT when a person is near-death. This stems from research he co-authored in 2013, which found DMT in the pineal gland of rats. Further evidence comes from comparing the effects of near-death experiences with the effects of DMT. Multiple papers have been published on this topic, and they show strong similarities between the two. During a near-death experience, people report a feeling of ‘transcendence’, inner peace, and the sensation of traveling to ‘another realm’, where they meet sentient beings. Studies show strong evidence that experiencing a DMT trip can create similar long and short-term effects to a near-death experience. In the long term, humans who have taken DMT have brains with increased connectivity. It’s thought that people who have come close to death have the same kind of increased connectivity. 

In short, the theory is that upon death our brain may well release a great deal of DMT. We also know that brain activity skyrockets near-death, so combined with this we can hypothesize that our brains experience what we might describe as a natural afterlife. This leads to another notion; the natural eternal consciousness theory. Here, advocates claim that a person’s last conscious moment is preserved forever, as if beyond time. The mechanics behind it are a little sketchy, but it again links back to theories on the creation and release of DMT.

Elsewhere, and contentious research suggests that near-death experiences ‘prove’ there is a supernatural afterlife. However, some instead believe that an NDE (whatever it is) is more likely an opening glimpse at a natural afterlife. The experience is real, it’s just not of a supernatural origin. Rather, it’s more a dreamlike condition. All the research into brain activity during death perhaps supports this idea, with some concluding that when we die, we enter a dreamlike and timeless state. Thus, we enter a natural, everlasting afterlife. 

For now, we have more than a few angles to approach from. Conventional neuroscience generally claims that once the human brain dies, consciousness is lost completely. Nothing remains, the afterlife doesn’t exist. The technologists are hoping for a solution, however, by effectively prolonging the human brain in a different vessel - via mind uploading. It’s a reality that may (or may not) be possible. Still, though, this would never be a direct continuation of consciousness. So, the studies into DMT (and the natural eternal consciousness theory) offer one final route. A route that’s paved with the possibility that, actually, there’s a time-free, maybe euphoric, possibly higher, natural state waiting for us, when the time comes.